CRYTC Welcomes Visiting Australian Researcher
Fri. Sep. 18, 2015
The Centre for Research in Young People's Texts and Cultures (CRYTC) welcomes Emma Whatman, who will be a Visiting Researcher from September 1, 2015 – December 20, 2015. Emma is currently completing her PhD dissertation at Deakin University, in Melbourne, Australia. The title of her dissertation is “Mediating Bodies: Representing Femininity in Contemporary Young People’s Fairy-Tale Adaptations.” This research project investigates how medium, and medium specific conventions, impact on how female identities, bodies, and sexualities are represented in texts for young people. It explores how gender is depicted in three fairy-tales, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, and their adaptations across a variety of media. These media include picture books, young adult novels, film, new media applications, and comic books. This project investigates the implications modern fairy-tale adaptations have for the construction of contemporary and postfeminist female subjectivities.
As an undergraduate student in Children’s Literature, some of the first scholarly material Emma was introduced to was the work of the University of Winnipeg Children’s Literature scholars Dr. Perry Nodelman and Dr. Mavis Reimer. It was here that her passion for the discipline of Children’s Literature began. As she progressed through her undergraduate degree and into graduate studies, she began to read and learn from the journal Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures that is based in CRYTC.
CRYTC is an important national and international institution in the field of Children’s Literature. Emma explains, “In 2013 I attended an international Children’s Literature conference in Maastricht, Netherlands, and met the current director of The Centre for Research in Young People's Texts and Cultures, Dr. Doris Wolf. Upon hearing about the strong community of Children’s Literature scholars and teachers at the University of Winnipeg, and the opportunities for early career researchers such as myself, I knew coming to Winnipeg would be invaluable to my research career. While there is strong expertise at my home institution, Deakin University, visiting the University of Winnipeg presented the opportunity to work with other scholars in my area, such as Dr. Naomi Hamer.” Dr. Hamer is currently involved in the international and interdisciplinary project Fairy Tale Media and Cultures Today, led by the University of Winnipeg’s Dr. Pauline Greenhill (Women’s & Gender Studies), which has significant parallels to Emma’s doctoral thesis.
Doris Wolf, Director of CRYTC, believes that the Visiting Researcher program has benefits for the wider university community too: “Not only is Emma’s visit here important in strengthening the University of Winnipeg’s connections to the next generation of researchers in the field of young people’s texts and cultures from other parts of the globe, but she is sharing her work with a wide range of students and faculty while she’s here. She’s teaching a fairy tales course to Education students in the Winnipeg Education Centre’s ACCESS program, and she’ll also be presenting a public lecture on her own work in late November so watch for that announcement.”